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In March, Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp (ACPC) saw its best month for global downloads since its launch in 2017, at 2.7 million across Apple App Store and Google Play Store according to Priori Data.

There was a broad reduction in games-related acquisitions and funding rounds in Q1, which was largely fuelled by declining activity in China. The mobile games segment remained strong and represented the majority of deals, underlining the state of the global games market as mobile-first.

The global low-voltage (LV) drive market was sluggish in 2019 after a 5% growth in 2018 over 2017. The slowdown in the LV drive market was due to trade and political uncertainties, with an expectation of recovery toward the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020. However, this optimism was wiped out by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the crash in global oil prices in April 2020.

The start of 2020 was marked by what appeared to be a new wave of regulatory pressure on major tech firms, with the FTC requesting data on all mergers and acquisitions by Alphabet (including Google), Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft cover the period from January 2010 to the end of 2019.

Google advertising revenues grew 10% to $33.8 billion in Q1 2020 from $30.6 billion in the same period of last year. On a year-on-year basis, Google search grew 9% from $22.5 billion to $24.5 billion and YouTube ads grew 34% from $3.0 billion to 4.0 billion.

Netflix has reported strong Q1 subscription growth amidst the impacts of the coronavirus. The international subscription video service gained 15.77 million net subscribers in Q1 bringing the company to 182.86 million global subscriptions, up 22.8% year over year. Before COVID-19’s spread, Netflix anticipated adding 7 million global subscribers in Q1 2020.

Tencent’s PUBG Mobile and Garena’s Free Fire were the clear success stories of the battle royale scene last year. According to Priori Data, these titles saw year-on-year growth of 436% and 280% respectively, whilst Epic Games’ Fortnite declined by 30%, and NetEase’s Knives Out by 13%. The sustained success of PUBG Mobile and Free Fire is a result of them establishing dedicated fan-bases in territories such as India, Brazil and Southeast Asia.

Square Enix’s mobile title Dragon Quest Walk generated upwards of $112m in net revenue in Q4 2019, according to Priori Data. It is only available in Japan, and provides credible competition for Pokémon GO in the region based on the strength of the Dragon Quest IP.

Facebook reported Q4 2019 and full year 2019 results on 30 January 2019. Full year advertising revenue grew 27% year-on-year to $70 billion, in line with the company’s total revenue which grew 27% to $71 billion.